So I think my midlife crisis started yesterday. The Kid Himself was due to meet me at my car after school yesterday, and I thought that if I changed plans and met him at his classroom, maybe I could help him find his lost hoodie and we could go to the school library and look for the last book he needs for the mission project.

[n.b. for those who don't live in California: the focus in history/social studies in the 4th grade is on California history and features a huge project on the history of the era of the missions in Alta California. TKH scored Mission San Juan Capistrano, so my parents and I took him down there before the winter holiday, when among other things, I had lunch with a dear friend I don't see often enough.]

Instead, TKH chewed my hand off, part of his ongoing mission to bite the hand that feeds him. I mean, I was all set to take pictures of the pages he needed with my phone since he’d maxed out the number of books he could check out. But no, chomp chomp chomp.

As I sat in my car, I thought, “Suburbia really is hell, isn’t it? I mean, is this all there is? I always thought my life would be different. More about ideas and less….this. More Les liaisons dangereuses and fewer uncooperative ingrates. More scary kisses and bettering up my badness and less quiet loathing.”

Oh well. So I decided to write a holiday novella for Dreamspinner, the only way I could do a holiday CalPac story. All the stories for the DSP holiday anthologies have to be stand alones, no spin-offs. Since I’ve kind of been itching to do something out of the main CalPac narrative, this seemed like a good way to do it.

I’d originally thought of something focusing on Nick an Morgan’s first Christmas, but since I’ve got so many words to play with, I may expand it a bit, maybe all the established couples thus far reminiscing about their first holidays together. If I’m feeling really mean, I’ll include Stuart and Philip, just to tease you.

DSP defines a novella as 15-30K, and then there’s a long novella too, which is between 30-70K. After that, it’s a novel. I’m really not planning to make it a CalPac holiday novel, especially since I’m halfway through Stuart and Philip’s story and currently taking a breather to work on a steampunk novel that has nothing to do with m/m, although there are, for want of a better couple, gay people in it.

Anyway, the deadline for holiday releases is in July. So I get to pretend to be in a festive mood when the temps are heating up in Sacturdmento.

Also, I apologize of the paragraph spacing is off. WordPress hates me today.

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